BRUSSELS FOCUS EU-Office Brussels 38, rue du Tacitume B-1000 Brussels Tel: 00 32 22 34 62 80 Fax: 00 32 22 34 62 81 fes@fes-europe.eu www.fes-europe.eu The Code of Conduct for a better division of labour in the development policy – is it a real milestone? September 2007 During the German EU-Presidency division of labour in the development policy was one of the political priorities in the field of develop­ment co-operation. As a result of the consulta­tion process the Council of the European Un­ion adopted conclusions on the division of labour and a Code of Conduct. The German Ministry for Development Co-operation called the Code of Conduct“a milestone and best­practice model for the international donor community”. But what does it mean? The EU accounts for more than half of the world­wide Official Development Assistance(ODA) and includes 15 of 22 bilateral donors organised in the Development Assistance Committee(DAC)(plus EC and New Member States). If the Member States of the EU stick to their Commitment and the Millen­nium Development Goals bilateral aid will be dou­bled in the next years. One of the big problems of development co-operation is that too many donors are concentrating their aid on the same countries and sectors. This leads to the nuisance that, on the one side, there are countries which receive high amounts of ODA in relations to their gross national income(so called“Darling countries”). On the other side, the DAC has identified a number of fragile states which receive little aid(so called“or­phan countries”). With the“Paris Declaration” in the year 2005 the Member States of the EU and the international community committed themselves and their or­ganisations to increase efforts in harmonisation, alignment and managing of development aid. In addition there is the tendency in national states to concentrate their development co-operation on fewer countries and to reduce the number of part­ner countries. The German Ministry of Develop­ment Co-operation for example reduced the num­ber of partner countries from around 120 before the year 1998 to around 70 today. In the next years the number will be reduce to around 60 partner countries. This change of strategy concerning the number of partner countries and the commitment to the Paris Declaration motivated the German Ministry of Development Co-operation to focus its agenda during the EU-Presidency on a possible reform of the division of labour in the development co­operation. The need for better efficiency and har­monisation of the development co-operation of the EU-Member States is well known. This is, for in­stance, reflected well in the declaration adopted by the development ministers of the EU in October 2006 on a set of guiding principles for better com­plementarity and division of labour in European Development Co-operation. With the start of the German EU-Presidency in January 2007 Germany, together with their Trio­partners 1 Portugal and Slovenia(the next presiden­cies of the EU), launched an independent study 2 on division of labour. The intention was to feed the debate with scientific analysis and submit concrete proposals for furthering the progress towards bet­ter division of labour in the European Development 1 For 18-month, the three Presidencies due to hold office during that period prepare a programme of Council activities for that period. This programme reflects the political priorities of the three Presidencies on the con­text of the Union’s longer-term strategic orientations. Germany, Portugal and Slovenia outlined the priorities under the title“Strengthening the European Union’s Role as a Global Partner for Development”(see Internet links on page 4). 2 The study was carried out by the German Development Institute(DIE), in co-operation with the Centre of African and Development Studies(CEsA), Technical University of Lisbon and the Centre of International Relations(CIR), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana.